Don't Cry For Me - fill in the rest yourself

Friday, October 21, 2016
Buenos Aires , Bolivia
In order to get from La Paz in Bolivia to Buenos Aires we had to get up at 3am so that we could get to the airport at El Alto for the first leg of the journey to Santa Cruz - also in Bolivia. The guide was brilliant. He sorted out all the checking in and made sure the baggage was checked through to Buenos Aires and sorted out the boarding passes for both flights. Getting through security was OK which I was quite surprised at. The flight to Santa Cruz was about an hour and there was then supposed to be an hour and a half wait for the flight to Buenos Aires - except there was a problem with the plane so it was actually 4 hours. Sitting on the floor, in an airport, in Bolivia is not something I would necessarily recommend!

When a plane eventually turned up it was a 3 hour flight, plus an hour for crossing into a different time zone . Getting through immigration, baggage collection and customs was a breeze. The UK could learn from the Argentinians. When we got through all that to arrivals there were swarms of teenage girls waiting and it soon became clear that on the flight was the South American version of One Direction. When they came through the screaming started. I then clapped eyes on the tour guide and immediately felt like screaming myself!!

We got dropped off at the hotel at 6pm. That's a long day of travelling, eating weird Bolivian airport food, getting caught up with screaming teenage girls and swooning at the sight of a handsome man. There was only one thing to do - go in search of food and (more importantly) wine. I mean it's Argentina right? It would be rude not to. There's a funky pizza place next to the hotel so that was it. Pizza and Malbec - just what the doctor ordered.

After the first decent night's sleep in what seems like months it was a city tour with the tour guide (did I mention how handsome he is?) We started with the usual buildings - cathedral (the current pope's former hang out)
- the pink house - where Evita used to speak to the masses and where General Galteri announced the invasion of the Falklands . They don't call it a war they call it a conflict and because of that they don't pay any pensions to the veterans - most of whom were conscripts. There's a semi permanent protest about that opposite the pink house. There's also a memorial to the 1000s of 'disappeared' people. In the 70's a group of mothers of these 'disappeared' people would regularly come to the square so that people wouldn't forget. A brave thing to do when it was a military regime who were responsible for the disappearances in the first place.

We then went on to Boca where there is a football club. Names of footballers were mentioned but I didn't pay any attention to that! There's a funky market type place - think Camden Lock. You can have a photo taken with a fake tango dancer if you fancy it - I didn't.

The tour finished at the cemetery which is a whole series of mausoleums. It's like a small town, complete with street names. You can see the coffins on shelves in some of them which I thought was bit creepy . Evita is buried there in her family's mausoleum rather than anything with the Peron name on it. After she died Juan Peron married twice more and when he died in the 70's his widow didn't want him to be buried in Buenos Aires.

That was the end of the tour so it was time for more Malbec and empanadas - which are a bit like a pasty only smaller and a with a bit of spice. The final stop of the day was the El Ateneo Grand Splendid book shop. Both grand and splendid! Great coffee and lemon ice cream too.

Tonight I'm off to the tango - I mean come on it's Friday night in Buenos Aires what else was I going to do? Tomorrow it's off across the Agentine pampas for a day of gauchos, horses and steak.

The wi fi doesn't want me to upload any more photos at the moment. I'll try again later.
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Comments

Auntie
2016-10-22

I love reading about your experiences, you have such an amazing outlook on life and so brave going into the unknown. Fantastic

2025-02-07

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